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Overview
Honoré Daumier (1808-79) was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter and sculptor, whose many works offer an acerbic, humorous and constantly intelligent commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century. Daumier produced over 500 paintings, 4000 lithographs, 1000 wood engravings, 1000 drawings and 100 sculptures. A prolific draughtsman, he was perhaps best known for his caricatures of political figures and satires on the behaviour of his countrymen, although posthumously the value of his painting has also been recognised.
Daumier produced his caricatures for the comic journal Le Charivari, in which he held bourgeois society up to ridicule in the figure of Robert Macaire, hero of a popular melodrama. In another series, L'histoire ancienne, he took aim at the stultifying pseudo-classicism of the art of the period. In 1848 Daumier embarked again on his political campaign, still in the service of Le Charivari, which he left in 1863 and rejoined in 1864. A humanitarian left-winger with a tremendous gift for mordant social satire, Daumier was frequently in conflict with conservative government authorities, and was imprisoned for six months in 1832. He had many powerful admirers, however, including critic and poet Charles Baudelaire, who called Daumier 'One of the most important men, not only I would say in caricature but also in modern art'
As well as Le Charivari, Daumier was a regular contributor to La Caricature (1830-43), a satirical weekly whose cartoons repeatedly attacked King Louis Philippe and his increasingly reactionary political supporters. These included Louis Napoléon, 2nd Duke of Montebello (1801-74). The caricature is usually known as 'Lannes', the Duke's proper surname, probably an attempt to bring this grand lawyer, politician and diplomat down to earth. His father, Jean Lannes and 1st Duke, was one of Napoleon's most daring and talented generals. Daumier caricatured the 2nd Duke a second time, rather more brutally, in 1850.
See:
Wikipedia, 'Honoré Daumier', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_Daumier
Wikipedia, 'Louis Napoleon Lnnes', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Napol%C3%A9on_Lannes
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art April 2018